Renewable energy, and in particular energy generated by solar photovoltaic panels or wind/water turbines, can be particularly suitable for developing countries since transmission and distribution of energy generated from fossil fuels can be difficult and expensive in such countries.
Advances in technology and reduction in manufacturing costs make solar energy an attractive alternative to energy generated from fossil fuels. During the period between 2008-2011, the price of photovoltaic modules per megawatt (MW) has fallen by over 60%.
Approximately 1.5 billion people around the world do not have access to grid electricity. An additional 1 billion are connected to unreliable grids. Even though these people are typically poor, they pay far more for lighting than people in western countries because they use inefficient energy sources (such as kerosene) which are far costlier than grid electricity or environmentally-produced energy.
Renewable energy projects in many developing countries have demonstrated that renewable energy can directly contribute to economic development and poverty alleviation by providing the energy needed for creating businesses and employment as well as providing energy for cooking, space heating and cooling, lighting, etc. In addition, renewable energy can also contribute to education by providing electricity to schools as well as to homes for home based education, in addition to providing energy for mobile devices and wireless communications.
In a typical environmental energy system utilizing solar or wind power, excess energy is stored in an energy storage device such as a battery. This is accomplished via an energy storage regulator (also called a charge controller), also common in many consumer electronic devices such as laptops, emergency lights, mobile phones, etc.
Stored battery power is typically available to electronic devices without any access restrictions or need for device-battery authentication. However, in cases of stored environmentally-produced energy, lack of access restrictions and authentication can lead to theft of electrical energy and depletion of stored energy, as well as theft of expensive system components (e.g., batteries).
It would therefore be advantageous to provide a system that would overcome the deficiencies noted above which can provide electrical energy to a user from an energy storage device which is authenticated for use with an electrically-connected environmental energy source. It would be further advantageous to provide a system which further controls the amount and rate of electrical energy supplied from the energy storage device based on a plan purchased by the user.